All about Walt Whitman

4 THE POEMS

This section contains the books and poems from Leaves of Grass on which we have been working up to now. After much re-working, we believe they are now ready to be presented to public appreciation. As we know, a translator’s work is never finished, for every time we revise the texts we find new errors that were invisible before. However, we can at least present the text now at its current final version. Naturally, they will be re-worked whenever we go back to them, as we have done with the books translated for our Master’s thesis. As we continue our work, we will also add new foot-notes and comments when we think they are convenient or necessary to a better understanding of their content. By the way, the poem “Do Berço Infindamente Embalando” (“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”) had appeared as an annex in our Master’s thesis (SARAIVA, 1995, p.162), since it was referred in that work as an expression of Whitman’s love for opera, of which this poem is an example. The poet himself said that he was greatly indebted to opera, and even stated that he would not have written Leaves of Grass without having been “saturated” by this musical experience. Consequently, there are traces of this experience in his poems, especially in “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”, which formally is an aria. Whitman especially admired Marietta Alboni (1826-1894), “the greatest coloratura soprano [and contralto] in the history of opera”, whose performances in New York were all attended by him; Geremia Bettini, the tenor; and Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), the composer. Naturally, as an opera lover, he loved Gioachino Rossini, too (1792-1868), who was Verdi’s master. In his New York years, the poet was driven to tears by these wonderful artists, a fact that he remembered with joy in his old age (ALLEN, 1955, pp.113-5). As a matter of fact, these artists are mentioned by Whitman in another poem, “Proud Music of the Storm”, which resembles an “operatic overture” (a prelude), in which Alboni is depicted as “The lustrious orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother, / Sister of loftiest gods” (WHITMAN, 2002, pp.339-45). As we have proposed in the Introduction, we have been able to re-create this poem as well. Actually, all the SEA-DRIFT cluster has been re-created.

If there is an aspect of Romanticism that was shared by Whitman without the shadow of a doubt, it must be the love for music. We have discussed Whitman’s relation or reaction against some Romantic features, such as morbidity and its lack of involvement with social problems, yet, in the field of music, the situation is exactly the opposite. Not that Whitman agreed with the Romantics that music was “the most romantic of all arts” (SCHENK, 1979, p.201), but because he believed in the “music’s power to stir up” feelings and emotions, that is, music had for him an “incomparable appeal to the emotions”, even though the Romantics “in general preferred to live as it were in the past or the future” and “music constituted the sphere in which the present could be best experienced in a kind of enchanting dream” (1979, pp.231-2). The following passage from section 26 of “Song of Myself” will illustrate the point:

I hear the violoncello, (’tis the young man’s heart’s complaint,)

I hear the key’d cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears,

It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,

Ah this indeed is music—this suits me.

A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,

The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.

I hear the train’d soprano (what work, with hers is this?)

The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,

It wrenches such ardors from me, I did not know I possess’d them,

It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves,

I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath,

Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,

At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,

And that we call Being. (WHITMAN, 2002, p.49)

We insert here our revised re-creation of this passage, with special emphasis on the “ardors” that the poet did not know that he possessed. This is in accordance with the power of music stressed by the Romantics, which makes music a truly divine art, showing to ourselves what was previously unknown in ourselves:

Ouço o violoncelo, (é a queixa do coração do jo­vem,)

Ouço a corneta afinada, ela desliza veloz pelos meus ouvidos,

Ela provoca doce-doidas pontadas no meu abdome e peito.

Ouço o coro, é uma ópera dramática,

Ah isto de fato é música – isto condiz comigo.

Um tenor grandioso e recente como a criação me preenche,

A esférica flexão de sua boca extravasa e me preenche plenamente.

Ouço a soprano preparada (que é este trabalho junto ao dela?)

A orquestra me lança mais longe que o vôo de Urano,

Ela arranca uns ardores de mim que eu não sabia que possuía,

Ela me singra, agito os pés descalços, eles são lambidos pelas ondas indolentes,

Sou cortado por amargo e raivoso granizo, per­co o fôlego,

Imersa em melosa morfina, minha traquéia sufocou nas voltas[1] da morte,

Por fim afrouxou de novo para sentir o enigma dos enigmas,

E a isso chamamos Ser.

(SARAIVA, 1995, pp.30-1)

Paraphrasing Whitman’s words on the 1891-92 edition of Leaves of Grass, we shall let the world judge what we present here; as for ourselves, we are content with what we have done. And very glad to have been granted the opportunity to do it. By the way, we are following here the text of the 1891-92 edition published by Norton Critical Editions (WHITMAN, 2002).

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[1] Voltas da corda em volta do pescoço.

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To read the poems in Portuguese, go to Poesia de Whitman, the website in Portuguese that contains all the poems translated in my doctorate, plus “Song of Myself“, “Children of Adam” and “Calamus“.

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